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Search For Well Known Writer has Deadly Ending

Salem-News.com Staff

Karen Sykes planned on writing about the hike for Visit Rainier, a tourism website to which she contributed.

The three-day search for a well-known outdoors writer who went missing while hiking on Mount Rainier took a grim turn Saturday, when a body was discovered in rough terrain off the trail where she was last seen. Photo Courtesy: DelhiDailyNews.com

(SEATTLE, Wash. ) - The three-day search for a well-known outdoors writer who went missing while hiking on Mount Rainier took a grim turn Saturday, when a body was discovered in rough terrain off the trail where she was last seen.

The body has not been officially identified to be that of 70-year-old Karen Sykes, an author who penned the “Hike of the Week” column for the former Seattle Post-Intelligencer.

But Sykes’ daughter, Annette Shirey, told NBC News officials informed her that the body found was her mother’s. There are no reports of anyone else missing on the mountain, a parks spokesman said.

Rescue teams on the ground and in helicopters scoured the area around the trail for days until a ground grew made the grisly discovery just before 3:00 p.m., Mount Rainier National Park spokeswoman Patti Wold said.

Sykes planned on writing about the hike for Visit Rainier, a tourism website to which she contributed. A native of Seattle, she has been hiking for 35 years and is the author of two books on the subject.